A Semi-Daily Advocate of the Modern School, Industrial Unionism, and
Individual Liberty.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Last Mayoral Academy Comment (For Now)

One thing I noticed reading the original report/proposal for the Mayoral Academies is that it was first conceived as a set of regional organizations. That is, you might have four or five towns and cities collaborating on, over time, two or three schools. This makes a lot more sense than what they're trying to do now, with a statewide network.

The combinatorics of a statewide organization don't work. There are too many districts and too many parallel configurations. Imagine a network of seven schools representing 20 "mayors." It might kinda make sense if you were looking at it from the point of view of a suburb bordered on two sides by Massachusetts, but if you're the urban hub, not really.

Actually, the mayoral academies have nothing to do with regional districts.

Additionally, the cuts to regional districts came from two places-- 1) Removing bonuses that were originally supposed to phase out that local representatives in the GA managed to have memorialized forever (that's right, other RI tax payers were paying more money to those districts for supposedly cost saving measures) and 2) Factors irrelevant to the fact that districts were regionalized and instead based on changes in student population and town wealth.

Put your cap on from someone in the state who stands to gain from this formula-- for years those districts (when treated in precisely the same way as your districts) were receiving less money. If you treat these districts in the exact same way, they should have had millions more.

For years the regional districts were over funded relative to almost everyone else.

I still cannot figure out why districts should get extra money for doing something which is supposed to save them money. If regionalization didn't lower your costs why did you do it?